Weekend vacation: Melgar

Our family wanted to get away for a long weekend. We decided to make our very own "summer reading program." We counted all the pages we read, with the goal of making it collectively to 4000. And we made it.

It was hard to wait until the end of the summer to get away. Lydia had a visit to the US (blog post pending), but the rest of us were all here doing the same old thing. And I can honestly say that for the last 10 summers we have spent most days in the water. So this felt like a long wait for what we normally get as our summer joy.

We only went a couple hours outside of Bogota to our favorite water park. We enjoyed a day there and then found a ride to the nearby town of Melgar. (Well, we got a partial ride, then we were asked to get out of the car, which was stopped still in traffic around construction and walk a mile into town with all of our things).

We were refreshed by cool water, warm sunshine on our skins, laughter, freedom from toxic exhaust fumes, and loving each other.

Normally at a pool or waterpark, I am lugged down by sunblock, goggles, towels, shoes, snacks, water, and all the other things a Mom is supposed to carry around. For the first time in our family I heard, "Hey, let's put all this stuff in a locker so we can all ride the rides together." So we did. All five of us left everything (even the camera for part of the day) and took off together to an abundance of laughter and thrills. Joy.

We spent the rest of the weekend at a nice hotel sleeping long hours, playing unlimited mini golf, trying out medium-size golf (pitch-n-put), taking afternoon walks, swimming hard, and lounging by the pool.

We recesitated our good friend Lorenzo, enjoyed a slow and stress-free zip-line, and more water slides (like this one that the kids call the MCC slide because of their memory of the Hutchinson MCC sale.)

While we were gone for this lovely weekend away, our Colombian friends and colleagues, Jenny Neme and Ricardo Pinzon lost their own beloved 13 year old daughter to leukemia. When we left, we knew she was sick, but we did not know she had died. They had only learned of her illness one short week before she died. This shocked us all, and felt strange to come home and learn that most of our colleagues had been together over the weekend to honor her life. Another reminder of the fragility we live in every day.